Since I'm already ranting...

... here's another piece of dumbfuckery to beat your head against your desk about. Apparently the bus companies in Ontario are feeling a little threatened by people using teh intertubes to arrange carpools.

Online Carpooling Service Fined For Unregulated Transportation

from the how-dare-you-ride-with-someone-else dept

One of the great things about the web, obviously, is that it allows for much more efficient communication that opens up new and useful offerings. For example: the web offers the ability to find other people traveling to the same general place you're heading and to set up a convenient carpool. It's good for the environment. It's good for traffic. It just makes a lot of sense. Unless, of course, you're a bus company and you're so afraid that people will use such a system rather than paying to take the bus. That's what happened up in Ontario, as earlier this year we wrote about a bus company that was trying to shut down PickupPal, an online carpooling service, for being an unregulated transportation company. TechCrunch points us to the news that the Ontario transportation board has sided with the bus company and fined PickupPal. It's also established a bunch of draconian rules that any user in Ontario must follow if it uses the service -- including no crossing of municipal boundaries -- meaning the service is only good within any particular city's limits.

It's better than being shut down completely, and the service can still operate elsewhere around the world, but this is yet another case where we see regulations, that are supposedly put in place to improve things for consumers, do the exact opposite. Just like we've seen elsewhere, you get regulatory capture, where an established industry uses the regulations not for their intended purpose, but to actually drastically limit the competition.

*sigh* Why can't we all just... aww, screw it.

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Pure Rant

I hate the fucking United States Postal Service. I know, I said I don't include "hate" in my personal ideology, but I hate the fucking United States Postal Service.

First off, we've got those stupid community mailboxes in my neighborhood. Not an apartment complex, but free standing houses. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I thought the purpose of the Post Office was to deliver my mail to me. Not make me go fetch it. If I wanted to drive somewhere to get my mail, I'd just get a post office box.

Secondly, our entire life is handled online. We don't receive a single paper bill anymore. Magazines only come once a week. Birthday cards come once a year. Damn near everything else is either trying to get me to buy something or trying to get me to apply for their credit cards (side rant: I thought we were in a credit crunch? Why the hell am I still getting these ridiculous offers? I even get home equity offers! Can't they read the damn headlines?)

In other words, we don't get our mail on a daily basis. Sometimes it's more than a couple of days. Occasionally we've gotten a note from the letter carrier saying that our mailbox was full and that we had to go to the post office to pick it up. Fine, whatever. But not this time. We got a note that said we hadn't picked up our mail so they were returning it to the senders. WTF?!?

So I call the number given for my local post office. After navigating their mindless automated system, I get to speak to an actual human almost immediately. Apparently they're able to get someone to answer the phone promptly, but they can't be bothered to actually deliver my mail to my house.

Anyway, the end result is that I've got to go physically to the Post Office and see if my mail is still there. They can't even tell me over the phone if my fucking mail is actually there or not. Security reasons, they tell me. Yeah, 'cause al Queada could call and find out if my coupons and magazines are waiting at the post office for me and could use that information to infiltrate the government network and destroy the world!

So I hate the fucking United States Postal Service. And this image pretty much sums up my day:



Thanks to the Rev. BigDumbChimp for the pic. I'm right there with you, bro.

Identity Theft!

All right, maybe not quite identity theft. But it's still disturbing. I stumbled across a post on a Christian forum by someone called "cyberlizard" (I admit it, I'm not ashamed: I Google myself sometimes). Now, I'm not so full of myself that I imagined that I would be the only one to come up with that moniker, but did the other person have to be a religious whackaloon? Here is what he was wondering:

any insight

---

the bible is at times full of obscure verses which do not appear to make any sense, or get a brief mention but never get another look in.

here is a good example.... coming from Matthew's gospel.

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

ZOMG, zombie attack!!! Quick, grab your shotguns and baseball bats! Where's the nearest S-Mart?!?

does anyone else ever read this verse, scratch their head and wonder why the verse is never mentioned anywhere else, or what happened to them after that. The bible does not say they ascended, nor does it ever speak of them again.

I am open to ideas.....


Steve __________________
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Blessed is the one coming in the name of ha’shem - בּרוּךְ הַבָּא בְּשֵׁם יְיָ


Now to Him who is able to keep you from falling..... be glory, majesty, dominion and authority for ever. (Jude)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yeah, Steve, there's a whole lot of things in the bible that do not appear to make any sense. But rather than truly examine them and try to come up with a rational explanation, your kind immediately just accepts them as truths. I'm actually quite surprised at even this superficial level of questioning. But your compatriots are there to save you with their responses:

A powerful example of the effects of Jesus' resurrection. The history of where they went is not revealed except that they went into Jerusalem and appeared to many.

I would think they had much to testify about the power of God having been in the reality of "life after death" and the truths of it.

And:

I read a teaching around that passage which supposed that there were so many supernatural things happening in those few days, that the dead coming out of their tombs was just another.
Like ' the day turned to night, the temple curtain was torn in two, there was a massive earthquake.. oh yeah and some dead people came back to life'
I'm surprised that no-one wrote about it in a book, Josephus or his peers. It would have been fascinating to read.

Hey, if your looking for good zombie fiction, check out The ULTIMATE Zombie Book List.

But this reply by Angeloffire enters into WTF-land:

There actually is more on what happened in the bible, but it doesn't refer directly to what you quoted verbatum. Let me explain:

Paradise use to be near Hades. I can even prove it scripturally but before I do, several have had dreams and visions and seen it too. Mary k. Baxter I think...if memory serves me correctly was one such person.

God moved paradise! He set those who were in prison in paradise free.

Matt. 12:40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

This is the location of hades....the heart of the earth.

Now look what he says to the guy hanging beside him on the cross:

Luke 24:43 And Jesus said unto him Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.

He took the man with him to paradise in the belly of the earth where for three days and nights he preached the gospel!

When he went to preach to those who were in a spiritual prison 1 Pet. 3:19 and conquered death, that is why the people were climbing out from the graves and preaching.

He preached to those who died in the flood and removed paradise to a different location....now the third heaven 2 Cor. 12:2-12:4....

It is amazing that nowhere does it mention what happened to the dead guys who were walking. I personally believe that as the bible says that Jesus is the firstfruits of the dead, whether these people dead people continued to live, I don't know.

I have also wondered what the effects of preaching to those who died during the flood would accomplish....odviously the purpose was to save them and give them a chance at salvation. Whether they were able to leave hades then or not I do not know.

God is wonderous and His ways past finding out....I so love every little bit of truth he shows me and I long for more daily. What a wonderous God we serve.....

I am sooooo tempted to sign up and post, just for the lulz. At least there are enough differences between us to tell the difference, right?

Boy Suspended For Sporting Rayhawk

Now this is just plain stupid [emphasis mine]:

TAMPA -- The Rayhawk, a trend ever since Tampa Bay Rays players starting sporting them, has gotten a 12-year-old boy an in-school suspension.

"I was surprised. It's just a hairdo, really nothing, just a hairdo," said Zach Sharples, an honor student at Lincoln Middle in Manatee County.

Sharples said he must stay under in-school suspension until he changes the haircut or grows it out.

Boy, this must be some harido. I mean, it must be dangerous or something to cause them to suspend an honor student. What did administrators have to say?

...a representative for the school district said it is outlined in the dress code -- no distracting hairstyles.

This thing must be bright purple with sparklers in it and stand two feet high to be distracting. This is Jr. High after all. So let's take a look:

OMG!!!!!!111!!11!eleventy-one!1 I can't concentrate! My synapses are failing! Must...not...look...at...hair...

Seriously? Distracting? WTF?!?

Actually, come to think of it, this is bringing back memories. When I was in elementary school, oh, about 25 years ago, a kid dared to come to school with a mohawk. The uproar was incredible. We couldn't stop talking about it. For about a day. After that, it was like, meh. Administrators flipped out then too. Forced the kid to wear a hood till it grew out. It's nice to know we've made such advancements in 25 years.

I just thought of something else for administrators to ban at the school: Marines! I mean, how different is that mohawk from a Marine's "high and tight"?Sad, sad, sad. I can't believe our armed forces are allowing such distractions. What if there's a war? Our soldiers might be gawking at hairdos rather than killing the enemy. We need to get these brave school administrators and put them in the Marines to combat this kind of distraction. Our troops deserve the best.

I don't have to worry about hairstyles. This is what happened to me after reading the article:

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Facebook is pissing me off

In the immortal words of Dr. Bruce Banner, "Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

So I've got a Facebook account (no, you can't be my friend). I've been kinda into it. And they have this little feature where you can import a blog into your Notes. "Cool," I think, "I'll just import my blog into Facebook and get additional exposure" (I'm not generally so egotistical to think that people might actually be interested in my babblings, but the Facebook crowd are generally personal friends so it's cool).

Anyway, I do the import thing. All my old posts show up. So far, so good. And my new posts are showing up correctly. So today I get a comment on a Note and go to check it out. And I'm confronted with this:
WTF? I haven't done anything other than use a feature they provide. So I visit their FAQ page. Check this out:
Time to call "bullshit".

Facebook has determined that you were using a feature at a rate that is likely to be abusive. Before you were blocked, you were given a warning to slow down your use of this feature.

[emphasis mine] Um, no, they didn't. No notification, nothing in my inbox indicating there was a problem. Warning my ass.

So, what are the limits? Seems like a reasonable question. I'd like to play by the rules and avoid this in the future. Let's see what Facebook has to say:

Unfortunately, Facebook cannot provide any specifics on the rate limits that we enforce. Please know, however, that the speed at which you are acting and the sheer number of actions you have made are both taken into account.

Fracking brilliant strategy. You've exceeded the limits, but we're not going to tell you what they are. Oh, and by the way, if you exceed them again we'll ban you.

Fine. Be dicks. How long with this stoopid block last?

The duration of the block varies depending on the nature of the offense, ranging from a few hours to a few days. When the block is over, please proceed with your site activity at a slower rate so as to avoid hitting another block or having your account disabled.

Facebook will not lift this block for you until the entire penalty time has elapsed.

You know what? At this point I'm about ready to say "frack you" and delete my account. I tend to post in bursts, put up a bunch of stuff while I'm thinking about it, then move on.

I've got to ask myself, how much do I need "flair" anyway?

Forget the environment, save our penises!!!

Forget vaccines and Autism, forget cancer, here is something that the scientists of the world need to jump on!!!

Do Babies Exposed to Phthalates Have Smaller Penises?

Via Treehugger (emphasis mine):

Phthalates, the plasticizer used to make vinyl soft, have been known to be a gender-bender that has been shown to affect the masculinity of rats. Even the Bush Administration, not renowned for its defence of the public against the chemical companies, has banned it from childrens' toys.

Now new research has found new evidence of "phthalate syndrome"- smaller penises, and undescended or incompletely descended testicles- in humans. Shanna Swan, director of the Center for Reproductive Epidemiology at the University of Rochester's school of medicine, who led the research, says phthalates are ""probably reproductive toxins and should be eliminated from products gradually because we don't need them."

ZOMG!!11!1 We can't let this become an epidemic!

Of course the American Chemistry Council, representing the companies that make the chemical (Exxon Mobil, BASF, Ferro Corp., and Eastman Chemical) warns us to be "cautioned against over-interpreting any individual study."

Of course they would downplay the risk. It's a conspiracy to shrink our dicks!!! I wouldn't be surprised if these companies had a direct connection to the witches in Africa stealing penises. Someone needs to measure the phthalate concentrations in Africa. It can't be a coincidence.

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I love PETA

The Rev. BigDumbChimp once again reminds me that, as soon as I think the world can't get any stupider, there's always one more example of stupid to trump all the others.

This time PETA gets to provide the humor:

WATERBURY, Vt. -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a letter to Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, cofounders of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc., urging them to replace cow's milk they use in their ice cream products with human breast milk, according to a statement recently released by a PETA spokeswoman.

Now, Mrs. CyberLizard is a pretty hard-core lactivist, but I think even she would see the absolute stupidity of this.

Steve Higgins of the "Of Two Minds" blog was inspired by PETA to conceive of a fantastic new business plan:

I guess I can just open up a milking center at the mall so that I can get new mothers to stop by for a few minutes while I milk them. I could even offer them.. well lets see I could probably extract less than a gallon at a time...so at current rates - maybe offer them 10 cents for their time? I'll bet I could get at least enough milk from 100 malls to maybe provide enough ice cream for 1 mall.

I love Ben & Jerry's spokesman's response: "We applaud PETA's novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother's milk is best used for her child."

Here's the brilliant letter PETA sent to Ben & Jerry's:

September 23, 2008

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Cofounders

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc.

Dear Mr. Cohen and Mr. Greenfield,

On behalf of PETA and our more than 2 million members and supporters, I'd like to bring your attention to an innovative new idea from Switzerland that would bring a unique twist to Ben and Jerry's.

Storchen restaurant is set to unveil a menu that includes soups, stews, and sauces made with at least 75 percent breast milk procured from human donors who are paid in exchange for their milk. If Ben and Jerry's replaced the cow's milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers-and cows-would reap the benefits.

Using cow's milk for your ice cream is a hazard to your customer's health. Dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies, constipation, obesity, and prostate and ovarian cancer. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, America's leading authority on child care, spoke out against feeding cow's milk to children, saying it may play a role in anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and in the long term, will set kids up for obesity and heart disease-America's number one cause of death.

Animals will also benefit from the switch to breast milk. Like all mammals, cows only produce milk during and after pregnancy, so to be able to constantly milk them, cows are forcefully impregnated every nine months. After several years of living in filthy conditions and being forced to produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally, their exhausted bodies are turned into hamburgers or ground up for soup.

And of course, the veal industry could not survive without the dairy industry. Because male calves can't produce milk, dairy farmers take them from their mothers immediately after birth and sell them to veal farms, where they endure 14 to17 weeks of torment chained inside a crate so small that they can't even turn around.

The breast is best! Won't you give cows and their babies a break and our health a boost by switching from cow's milk to breast milk in Ben and Jerry's ice cream? Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tracy Reiman

Executive Vice President

For christ's sake!

/begin rant

Why is it that every major piece of news devolves into what people think about the invisible sky fairy? USA Today ran this article, originally via Reuters.

With Wall Street in turmoil, some in suits turn to religion

By Christine Kearney, Reuters

NEW YORK — As financial workers suffer through tumultuous times on Wall Street, some are turning to an old source of solace: religion.

Religious leaders said attendance was up at lunchtime meetings in New York's financial district last week, with many more people in business attire than usual.

I'd rather turn towards that old source of solace: booze. Both booze and religion will make you say and do stupid things, but at least with booze you can sober up.

A handful of men in suits and ties and women in business attire were among dozens of people at the Episcopal church, which was hit by debris from the World Trade Center collapse on Sept. 11, 2001. [emphasis mine]

What possible bearing on the story does this have? None that I can see, but apparently it's important enough to bring up again:

Just a few blocks away, St. Peter's Church has seen "a slight uptick in attendance among people in suits," said Father Peter Madigan. St. Peter's, a Catholic church, displays a cross found in the rubble of Sept. 11.

Seriously, WTF? Did Rudy Giuliani write this? It's bad enough that we're wasting time babbling about Wall Street workers going to church, but to throw in these extraneous 9/11 references; I just don't get it.

Anyway, to the punch line.

Lou Janicek, who works as a financial adviser on Wall Street, said he had not considered attending a religious service, but said Wall Street would benefit if people applied the same morals they learned in church to the workplace.

"What you do at work matters as much as whether you regularly attend church or the synagogue or whatever," said Janicek, who was brought up as a Christian. "If you are an accountant or you find yourself in an unethical situation, you can't just stand by and let it happen — then you have another Enron.

Really? People learn morals in church? And apply them to their lives? Oh, yeah, all the right-wing fundegelicals are Republicans. What a bastion of "religious" values and ethical behaviour. Right.

/end rant

I'm Sick

We all knew that, why is that news? This is not my usual mentally-sick sickness I'm talking about. You know, the sickness that manifests in inappropriate jokes, black humor, snarky comments, biting sarcasm, et al. No, my sickness this time is caused by a little thing known as a virus. I've got a cold flu black death. I'm dying. All right, technically we're all actively engaged in the process of dying. And the intellectual part of my brain is telling me that I'm not going to die anytime soon, much less because of this little bug. But that's not what my body says.

Except, viruses don't exist. The germ theory is an illusion. I have seen the light, and it comes in the form of the blinding stupidity of one Robert O. Young who tells us:

One must challenge everything in the modern construct of
immunology and what is said to be the immune system. The basis of modern immunology is founded on Louis Pasteur, the fraud, impostor, deceiver and self promoter. There is a serious problem to where every word and part of the anatomy must be questioned to find their use and function because of the fraud of Louis Pasteur.

I mean, how can one deny the brilliance of his logic when describing influenza:

For example, the word influenza means influence. Originally, influenza was said to come from the stars or heavens. The Avian Influenza is an influenza of a bird influence. More specifically, it is an influence of bird waste. The bird consumption industry in Southeast Asia is overcrowded to the point that the chickens are consuming their own waste, producing an over-acidification of the birds and workers that must work in the acidic air and waste.

It could be more accurately called Acidic Bird or Chicken Excrement Influenza that is only contagious to those consuming acidic birds, like chicken or breathing chemically altered air from chicken excrement. Because chickens do not have a urinary tract system, like humans and animals they are more likely to absorb their own acidic urine into their tissues. I guess you could say that's what makes chicken flesh or turkey flesh taste so juicy and why chicken or turkey flesh should never be consumed by humans!

Ahhh, the stupid, it burns more than the fever coursing through my body caused by the non-existant virus:

The word virus is originally Latin meaning poison, as in snake venom, (being too acidic). When a serious snake bite releases venom or acid into the skin and soft tissues, the small sweat vessels become so enlarged that red corpuscles can flow into the tiny seat glands, showing red skin patterns and allowing the venom or acids to escape through the skin. Acidity dissolves and enlarges blood vessels for the movement of acidic fluids or gases. Alkalinity constricts and normalizes the blood vessels.

The point being that viruses are molecular liquids or gases (venom) that can be created by chemical imbalances in humans, plants and animals (by malnutrition or toxic acidic food and/or drink consumption), also created in humans, plants and animal glands, sometimes used in defense (snake venom) or emergency (overactive adrenals), also can be crystallized in laboratories, rarely, if ever crystallized in vivo, and foolish to call viruses contagious when viruses are nothing more than acidic liquids or gases from biological transformation or rotting matter.

The brilliant "scientist" leaves us with these thoughts to ponder:

As you contemplate the cause of the flu, cold or any so-called infection, may I suggest that each of us take personal responsibility for the consequences of our choices, rather than blame a phantom Avian Influenza virus, cold virus, flu virus, cancer virus or some non-existent HIV virus. If you get sick, it is your own fault and not the cause of some phantom virus that you can blame to cover your own lifestyle and dietary transgressions. Save your money and save your life by making alkalizing and energizing lifestyle and dietary choices. This is where true immunity is found -- not in a vaccine or a drug which are all acidic and poisonous to the body but in living an alkaline lifestyle.

Sigh. So much for my attempts to lay the blame at the feet of microscopic little buggers for my illness. Instead it's because I had that glass of lemonade.

Many thanks to Orac for introducing me to the truth about germs.

Some confirmation of what I've suspected

I have been struggling to find some logical reason for the Republicans refusal to acknowledge reality. The hypocrisy displayed by the republican party this election cycle is just astounding. Even when they are flat-out proven wrong, the right-wing pundits keep spouting the same garbage.

Fortunately, I'm not the only one to notice. Jonah Lehrer of the blog "Frontal Cortex" has a good summary of this phenomenon:

I think this experiment helps explains a rather disturbing amount of our political discourse. What it neatly demonstrates is that the main reason so many campaigns traffic in dishonest allegations and pseudofacts is that, when it comes to voters, the facts don't really matter. Most of us are just partisan hacks:

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.

A similar "backfire effect" also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One group was offered a refutation by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; 67 percent of those provided with both assertion and refutation believed that tax cuts increase revenue.

In a paper approaching publication, Nyhan, a PhD student at Duke University, and Reifler, at Georgia State University, suggest that Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because conservatives may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, conservatives might "argue back" against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation. Nyhan and Reifler did not see the same "backfire effect" when liberals were given misinformation and a refutation about the Bush administration's stance on stem cell research.

I had to read this a few times to wrap my head around it. Basically, it shows that more people believed the lies after seeing proof of its fallacy than before. WTF?

He continues:

The Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels analyzed survey data from the 1990's to prove the same point. During the first term of Bill Clinton's presidency, the budget deficit declined by more than 90 percent. However, when Republican voters were asked in 1996 what happened to the deficit under Clinton, more than 55 percent said that it had increased.

Again with the denial of reality. Is this really so hard to comprehend:
Or how about this one? To difficult to process?

Yeah, right, "Drill, baby, drill". Graph from ::Architecture 2030

Anyway, back to the analysis:

What's interesting about this data is that so-called "high-information" voters - these are the Republicans who read the newspaper, watch cable news and can identify their representatives in Congress - weren't better informed than "low-information" voters. (The sole exception was Republicans who are ranked in the top 10 percent in terms of political information. As Bartels notes, it's only among these people that "the pull of objective reality begins to become apparent.") These citizens According to Bartels, the reason knowing more about politics doesn't erase partisan bias is that voters tend to only assimilate those facts that confirm what they already believe. If a piece of information doesn't follow Republican talking points - and Clinton's deficit reduction didn't fit the "tax and spend liberal" stereotype - then the information is conveniently ignored. "Voters think that they're thinking," Bartels says, "but what they're really doing is inventing facts or ignoring facts so that they can rationalize decisions they've already made." Once we identify with a political party, the world is edited so that it fits with our ideology.

Sigh. Still, I feel the need to keep preaching, even if it is only to the choir.

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Curiouser and Curiouser

John McCain has picked Alaska Governor Palin as VP. Rev. BigDumbChimp sums up this news perfectly.

Now, I'm not much of a political expert, but I can't for the life of me see where this is going. I'll leave it to the experts at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to explain this one.